How Long Is Too Long In Fermenter

[DASBrewers]

My Dad and I are fairly new at all grain brewing and we are trying to figure out what we may be doing wrong to not get a good FG. We are currently brewing a Chocolate Cherry Stout of our own design with 8oz of malto-dextrin added at the end of the boil to disolve it, 1/2 lbs of dried cherries in the boil, and added 10oz of dark chocolate chunks on the carboy bottom. We started with an OG of 1.088 in 6 gallons of wert. We made a yeast starter with a dry british ale yeast and yeast energizer. We fermented for a week in our carboy and transfered it off the chocolate chunks into our bottling bucket. Its gravity hasn't dropped from 1.055 in the 10 days since transfering it. I've read other posts saying to not transfer to the secondary until you're ready to bottle, basically just to clarify the beer. Our question is how long is too long to sit on the yeast cake? I've heard some of my friends saying you can get off flavors from dead yeast in the fermenter and to transfer it off there after a week but after this high OG beer not performing as well we would have liked I'm second guessing their advice. This is obviously our first try at this beer recipe but I'm pretty sure we could achieve a much lowere FG than 1.055.

 

[Revvy]

People have left their beers for a year with no issues. I've done nearly that.

This is the most asked and discussed topic on here, on a daily basis there are 5 or six treads on this.

This discussion has been thoroughly covered in this thread, it's become the "uber discussion" on this topic.

To Secondary or Not? John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff Weigh In .

Many of us forgoe secondary entirely and leave our beers in primary for a MINIMUM of 1 month.

 

[DASBrewers]

Thanks for the info, this is why I signed up on here. Great info in that thread thanks for pointing it out, we will just let it go as long as it needs then. We are still tinkering with our recipes and trying to figure out how low our FG will go and get the right taste we want. Cheers